The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Today, a wide variety of electronic devices, such as mobile phones, desktop and portable computers, car navigation systems, hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) units, etc. support software applications that display interactive digital maps. Depending on the software application and/or user preferences, digital maps may display topographical data, street and road data, urban transit information, traffic data, weather data, etc. Some software applications also receive geographic queries from users, such as requests to search for coffee shops in a certain area, and display search results on the digital map.
In general, users operate various user interface controls (radio buttons, scrollbars, etc.) or apply hand gestures (pinch, swipe, tap, etc.) to a touchscreen surface to pan the virtual camera to a new location and change the zoom level so as to set up a new viewport, or a portion of the digital map currently visible on the screen. In some cases, the user specifies a geographic location (e.g., “123 Main St.”), and the software application centers the viewport around the specified location at a certain predefined zoom level. In any case, the user provides a significant amount of input to the software application to position the viewport as desired.